- Is cutting off the head of a civilian contractor on videotape really all that different from the Republican practice of cutting off the funding to social programs that benefit the poor?
- The Iraqi freedom fighters routinely kill their enemies and dump their bodies into shallow graves—just as our very own freedom fighters once dumped tea into the Boston harbor!
- Sure, hardcore Muslims beat women and engage in both honor killings and forcible female circumcision; but let’s not forget that women in the US make only 70 cents on the dollar compared (acontextually) to their male counterparts. So, y’know—who are we to judge?
- Jihadists may drop stone walls on homosexuals, but rhetorically speaking, their anti-gay social conservative brethren here in the US continue to “stonewall” the civil rights of gays by irrationally fighting same-sex marriage.
- If we wish to condemn Wahhabism, does it not make sense to first condemn Christianity, whose Crusaders—like the modern-day pan-Arabists—advocated conversion at the tip of the sword?
- Why is it that those who are quick to condemn Palestinians for brainwashing children into hating Jews are the same people who defend a Pledge of Allegiance that brainwashes our own children into mindlessly serving Jesus?
- Whenever we talk about “shadowy networks,” we’re always talking about Al Qaeda. But what about our own founders and their ties to the Freemasonry? How shadowy was that shit?
- Just as Abraham Lincoln fought to keep the Union together, all Usama bin Laden is doing, when you get right down to it, is fighting to rejoin the fractured Arab world into one big happy caliphate.
- Before we criticize Zarqawi for his heavyhanded tactics in trying to stave off US occupation, we would do well to remember the heavyhanded tactics Republicans are promising to use should the Democrats attempt to block the President’s extremist nominee for Supreme Court Justice.
****
(h/t Stephen Meyer, via Malkin; original Williams comments here.)
Hey! You’re giving them ideas!
Just wait, we’ll hear Howard Dean use half of those this week.
Whoops!! He pulled the rug right out from under us. The word “terrorist” didn’t even exist 230 years ago!
Sure it did – it just looked like teerrorrifte
or something.
You are now ready for tenure!
Beautiful, as usual. Thanks for the great stuff you pull off on a daily basis.
Let me be the first to second docob.
BREAKING NEWS: Dan Rather has just unveiled a genuine 1773 memo in Times New Roman font with a photograph of Washington wearing a t-shirt that says “Ye Olde Terroriste”.
In other news, Jeff I just posted some cat pictures for you on my blog.
Williams attempts to explain himself before he runs off for the Founding Terrorists Day holiday weekend.
Now you’re really showing your conservative bona fides.
So it’s OK to be critical of Williams because you’re willing to step up to the plate as a citizen journalist right? I’m having trouble keeping all this straight. Oddly enough, the rules seem counterintuitive to me.
Who cares what you think? Have you made a list of 9 OTHER analogies? Because if not, you’re a ChickenCOMMENTONSOMEBODYELSE’SLISTOF9ANALOGIEShawk.
Tremendous, Fantastic. It made me write bad checks. And, currently, I’m using it as a cudgel to jam reason up the asses of the neogauche on other venues.
Cheers.
“fine” – thanks for ok…
Williams explanation was really mucho, profundo lame. Geez, at least Dick Durbin was able to work up a tear or two during his nonapology.
To which, Sir, I would anfwer: All that you say may be true, and the rebels Terrorifts and worfe; and yet you, Sir, have no right to say so without that you have offered yourfelf to be sent in Arms to Maffachufetts to quell the Rebellion. Because it is all about the Hypocrify.
Ahhhhh, I bask in the fisk by your analogies …
BONE-AHHH-FEEE-DES! (Alternate pronunciation…)
I regret that anyone thought that after a life spent reading and loving American history, I had suddenly changed my mind about the founders of our nation.
Gee, Brian, I regret that I have to share the freeways with people who actually listen to what you have to say.
Incidentally, no one gives two shits whether you changed your mind. We generally assume that you’ve held this sort of half-baked, insipid, twee little thought ever since you sat though your first sophmore American History class, you pompous meat sack.
Damn. Of course that brings up a larger issue. I’m also a chickenGOTNOBLOGhawk. I’m chock full of HYPOCRISY!
Do people like Williams really believe that such analogizing is enough like analysis to justify the asses they make of themselves when they do it?
Historical ignorance coupled with glib cynicism: how fucking repugnant.
I have to say, I’m not inclined to hold this against Brian–too much, anyway. I think he’s more guilty of trying to be clever, and accidently being too clever by half.
Though I think he’s basically a smart guy, I think he heard some kid in the newsroom say this, found it provacative, and went with it, without thinking it through. He may be a big ol’ Lib at heart, but I doubt he honestly thinks George Washington was a terrorist.
Is it more evidence of liberal bias in the media? Probably. Is it evidence of Brian’s desire for us to lose in Iraq? I don’t think so. I think it’s more indicative of the fact that the network newsrooms lack enough people of even the center-right persuasion, who might have felt comfortable enough to say something that might have given Brian pause. That’s it, and that’s all.
The British Crown might also have considered them: insurgents, activists, protestors, traitors, and ungrateful little pricks.
WTF does that have to do with someone who helped kidnap and torture American citizens being elected president of a nation that is openly hostile to us?
I too am a amateur student of history and think that Brian Williams and his pin-head cronies should be embarassed they make so much more money than the real writers and journalists that helped found this country.
What Moe said!
Ixnay on the Eemasonryfray, Jeff.
Move along, folks. Nothing to see here. These are not the drones you’re looking for.
Gotta go with Doug F on this one. I think he was just being a poseur, and it backfired on him. He was trying to show off the sophisticated, nuanced thinking that makes them so much smarter than everyone else, and whoops!
Oops. That’s kinda what Jeff said in the header, isn’t it? Oh, well.
ME TOO ME TOO ME TOO ME TOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
A commenter over at Tim Blair’s place really nailed this bit of moral equivalence:
I’m I the only one who cannot make any sense out of William’s defense?
“They apparently missed my point: That the BRITISH CROWN might have viewed American revolutionaries that way.”
I’ve been reduced to gazing at it like one of those Magic Eye pictures, hoping that some logical connection will magically reveal itself. It’s like the Chewbacca Defense.
What I’m trying to say is Brian Williams comes across as an idiot…to THE BRITISH CROWN! That is my point. British Crown.
I’m sure the mad genius Karl Rove is laughing up his sleeve as the media make absolute idiots of themselves. Give ‘em the rope…
dorkafork,
His defense just seems to be a reiteration of his first point: it’s not a big deal if some people think that Iran’s president-elect is a terrorist, because the British crown might have thought that George Washington et al. were terrorists. Frankly, this is just as offensive as saying that GW is a terrorist, because it pooh-poohs the concern that Iran’s president-elect might be one of the 1979 hostage takers.
Very Good. I am sure someone (or ones) in the MSM/DNC will be making these enlightened remarks during the Supreme Court fight.
The sad thing is that I’ve actually encountered arguments 1 and 3, put forth in all seriousness.
Indeed. Brian, indeed.
Ian Hamet: It’s not been uncommon for a while now to also run into #’s 6 & 9, also, with the bravado and unmistakable look that one must be an idiot not to understand those points.
Sadly, that is as much a comment on education and educrats as it is on the left’s ability to put three consecutive coherent words together.
Dear Jeff,
For those that may not know, at this particular time, place and date, that is to say, today, which some have said, some smarter than I, that it is in someway against what the colloquialism “them”, that is to say, as some have said in the past, that if it is up to one to judge, then all may not be judged by those whom they say are perfectly in their air to judge lest ye be judged, in a broader sense, those whom have towering intellect driven by years upon years of self-reflection and brutal honesty to the truth that which may lie within the hearts of many and the power of words to indicate tremendous advances in the arts, letters and sciences…welp, that’s all the time I have today, this day, let’s go to Jim Miklashewski at the Pentagon, how goes it Mik?
Signed,
Brain Williams
“If we wish to condemn Wahhabism, does it not make sense to first condemn Christianity, whose Crusadersâ€â€like the modern-day pan-Arabistsâ€â€advocated conversion at the tip of the sword?” No, it doesn’t make sense. But I do worry about those pesky Christian Pentecostals and Jehovahs Witnesses who keep bugging me to join them in their particular version of heaven. I sure hope they don’t turn as violent as the Salafists.
More seriously, analogies 1, 3, 4, and 6 facetiously juxterpose comparisons the no-one should be proud of.
I offer a semantic gem with which to comprise the ilk of Media homies like Brian Williams;Maureen Dowd;Barbara Boxer and erswhile Dan the Man; Mary Mapes;Jack Kelly; Mr. News Novak and who can ever forget our main men media-race claquies,Jason Blair and Ye olde New Rebulic’s irrepressible, irresponsible pre-Fahrenheit 9/11-Michael Moore epiSenatator,Seymor Glass:The New Age Class of dreck-filled INTELLECTUAL INBREDS!?!…Y’all are welcomed to use this marvelous sobriquet without attribution.
Merry CHRISTmas. AMGD. Arthur F. McVarish
Houston, Texas (former 26 year resident of The Peoples’PC/AC Republic of Massachusetts)